Here I am, 5:41 AM. It’s still black outside. The wind is blowing from the west and the temperature has dropped back down to the freezing ranges. My eyes are heavy and I almost nodded off a few minutes ago. I’m entering my 25th hour of consciousness.

The past 14 hours have been full of work: heat transfer, design of machine components, and Pro/E. I have again found it to be true that if I didn’t have to sleep I would get so much more done. I have been productive the last 14 hours. I can tell that I have lost my edge now, but until around 4:30 AM I was perfectly fine. Since then, I have noticed that my depth perception and my quickness of thought have decreased.

This leads us to the question on with of the three sleep approaches is the best. Although polyphasic sleeping sounds like the sweestest thing since sleep itself, it seems too hard to implement and too hard to maintain.

The all nighter can be used to step up production, but the problem always rests with recovery. Will I be able to function at 100% until the late evening tonight? Probably not.

So what is the solution? Again, we must point to the early riser. As I prepare to pack my things up here in the Gee, the first of the early risers will trickle in. They will be ready to tackle today. They’ll probably look with scorn on the few of us in here right now, eyes filled with a sleepless bleakness. As well they should…

Was the night here productive? Yes, I got a great deal of work done. However, increasing efficiency at other times would probably create and overall greater accomplishment.

At college, it is easy to drift off the early morning routine due to the phenomena where most college students stay up to ungodly hours. After break, the revolution begins. Everyone up at 6 AM and to bed by 10:30 PM. Call it the great sleep test or offer a comparison to Daniel and his request for vegetarian meals.